Sedatives

[Ireth]

In my Fae duology, there is a certain berry growing in Faerie called fuilsocair or stillblood, which works as a potent sedative -- three berries ingested are enough to kill a full-grown Fae, while a lesser amount will only put him to sleep. There is a scene in which a Fae uses this sedative on a human, by smearing the juice of a berry or two onto his glove right before he grabs her with one hand over her mouth, banking on the fact that she'll try to bite his hand, which she does. I don't want her to instantly fall unconscious, but it should be fairly quick. How fast do real, naturally-derived sedatives commonly work, and should I take that into consideration for a made-up plant from a fantasy world?

 

[FatCat]

Honestly, does it matter? You have a fictional sedative in a fictional world and your telling a story. Just roll with it.

 

[CupofJoe]

Toxins can work at incredible speeds - second or minutes.
Chloroform [that can be refined/distilled from seaweed] can put you under in less than 30s if inhaled - struggling [breathing harder] will make it work faster.
but for me the problem is not the speed but the dosage.
If it works very fast then too much / too long and it will probably kill or do something permanent...
But as our dear Cat says "Just role with it."

 

[Scribe]

Valerian root is the most common one that I know of.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

With sedatives the speed with which it works is often related to the route of exposure. Anything that can be breathed in, chloroform, ether, petrol etc will act very quickly. Ingestion is often much slower, so while petrol fumes may make you swoon at the station, drinking a bit of the stuff, apart from the obvious GI problems, will take longer to render you unconscious. Injection is somewhere in the middle speedwise. It's all a matter of how difficult the route is for the chemical to get from outside the body, to your bloodstream and then to your brain.

There's also a question of risk. Ether and chloroform are not used very often as medical sedatives any longer. The reason is that the difference between an effective dose and a lethal one is very small, making it too easy to kill someone. And don't forget that the dose needed to knock someone out varies widely, especially due to size.

For your knockout berries, I'd suggest instead of crushing the berries in his glove, your guy puts a number of whole berries in a cloth between say a couple of layers of material, then grabs the victim, crushes the cloth against his face so that the berries burst open, and holds until he breathes deeply and collapses, making sure to keep his face averted so that he too isn't overcome.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Scribe,

Valerian root used to be used in Victorian age medicine (and earlier) as a sedative. But it has to be prepared first, and is then usually given orally. It was used as a calming agent and a sleep aid for the most part. It might take twenty minutes to work, but was traditionally considered quite a safe sedative.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ireth]

Thanks for the advice, Greg. I hadn't thought of fumes from the berry's juice being as effective as the juice when ingested, but it might work. He'd have to be careful with the amount of berries he used, though; as I said, eating even a few berries can kill a full-grown Fae, and here he is using them to sedate a much smaller human girl. I don't know if he even knows whether the berries will work the same way on humans as they do on Fae, due to their very different physiology, so it'd be a pretty risky procedure for him if I decide to keep that in there. The alternative is physically knocking or choking her unconscious, which presents its own set of potential problems.

 

[SeverinR]

Inhaled sedation is a big variable, to little the person wakes up quickly, mere moments. To much and they might never wake up(coma death). That is why when they put you out for surgery they monitor vital signs. The persons size, weight, and lung condition all affect how the gas affects them. What would make a 400 lb linebacker dizzy would kill a 80 lb girl.

Quickest route:
Arterial line(basically straight to heart and out to all organs)
IV slightly slower then above.
Aspiration: quick, affected by lung absorption(ie damaged lungs don't transfer gases very well(not just Oxygen)
under the tongue(Sublingual) common place for nitro for heart patients.
injected; muscle: most common injection for medicine, skin:slowly absorbed. Which shows why darts can be deadly or a annoyance, dart hits a vein-very quick, dart hits muscle; moderately fast, dart hits skin; very slow reaction.
Swallowing is one of the slowest, it must be digested, absorbed and filtered by liver before affecting the person. (liver problems would affect the filtering also, as tolerance to chemicals, ie alcoholics can tolerate higher levels of some chemicals then the average person. But the liver damaged alcoholic would have lower tolerance to the chemicals.)
Through the skin is the slowest absorption unless something is used to accelorate the absorption.
Rectal(suppository or enema) absorption is fairly quick but I don't know how that would be used in a story.

 

[Ireth]

Inhaled sedation is a big variable, to little the person wakes up quickly, mere moments. To much and they might never wake up(coma death). That is why when they put you out for surgery they monitor vital signs. The persons size, weight, and lung condition all affect how the gas affects them. What would make a 400 lb linebacker dizzy would kill a 80 lb girl.

Quickest route:
Arterial line(basically straight to heart and out to all organs)
IV slightly slower then above.
Aspiration: quick, affected by lung absorption(ie damaged lungs don't transfer gases very well(not just Oxygen)
under the tongue(Sublingual) common place for nitro for heart patients.
injected; muscle: most common injection for medicine, skin:slowly absorbed. Which shows why darts can be deadly or a annoyance, dart hits a vein-very quick, dart hits muscle; moderately fast, dart hits skin; very slow reaction.
Swallowing is one of the slowest, it must be digested, absorbed and filtered by liver before affecting the person. (liver problems would affect the filtering also, as tolerance to chemicals, ie alcoholics can tolerate higher levels of some chemicals then the average person. But the liver damaged alcoholic would have lower tolerance to the chemicals.)
Through the skin is the slowest absorption unless something is used to accelorate the absorption.
Rectal(suppository or enema) absorption is fairly quick but I don't know how that would be used in a story.

All very true, but what also needs consideration is that some toxins may not work when given in certain ways. To take an example of a poison from the real world, would nightshade berries work the same if the juice was injected into someone, or any of your other examples, as they would if they were eaten?

 

[SeverinR]

Don't know. Using basic anatomy, I would say they would be more toxic since they bypass the liver filter.

Some unrefined inhaled poisons might not affect people sniffing them, being less toxic in natural form.
Can't think of anything poisonous one way that wouldn't be poisonous in other routes of administration.

Well, I think snake venom injected is deadly, but swallowed might cause stomach upset. (as when sucking the poison out.) Probably filtered by liver, or with stomach upset purged from the gastric system, back the path from which it came.

 

[wordwalker]

Well, I think snake venom injected is deadly, but swallowed might cause stomach upset. (as when sucking the poison out.)

Unless you have some kind of cut in your mouth-- always one thing to check if a friend gets bitten.

(By the way, if it's a purist speaking: "venom" is what an animal bites or stings you with, "toxin" is other natural nastinesses such as skin secretions, and "poison" can be used more precisely as non-natural substances.)